'I knew we could make it work' - how Henrietta Knight found her new right-hand man

Henrietta Knight has said that the possibility of joining forces with her new assistant trainer Brendan Powell was the catalyst that convinced her to apply for a training licence again 11 years after she retired.

Knight, who famously won the Cheltenham Gold Cup three years in a row with Best Mate from 2002 to 2004, was speaking to the Racing Post for a major interview in Sunday's newspaper in which she discussed her shock return to the sport, the burning ambitions that lie behind her decision and the "sadness" of the last year of her first training stint after her late husband Terry Biddlecombe suffered a stroke.

"I never fell out of love with racing or training," she said. "It was only circumstance that made me stop, and since then all my gallops and fences have been kept up to scratch and my schooling field is in fantastic condition because people kept using it, so it was just a question of going one step further."

Brendan Powell: "I've known him for years, from when Terry was here"Credit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)

The solution came as Knight made her way back from seeing her prodigy and friend Paul Robson – the racehorse-training undertaker from the Borders – and popped in to see how Powell was getting on at Rebecca Menzies' yard, having left his job with Joseph O'Brien.

"I'd been thinking about training again but I knew I couldn't do it on my own, and then Brendan came into the equation," she said. "I've known him for years, from when Terry was here, and when I went to see how he was getting on I thought, 'What a waste', and I wondered if he'd come and help me if I started training again."

It wasn't a tough decision for Powell, who by his own admission didn't have the involvement he had expected with Menzies, and the new training partnership was born, with the yard's first runners expected early in 2024.

Knight added: "Once I found somebody else who could understand me and what we do here – because I think I'm sometimes difficult to understand – I knew we could make it work. You've got to have the right person out there, that you can trust and know that they know their stuff, and there weren't all that many people I could nominate for that role."

Read more from Henrietta Knight and Brendan Powell in The Big Read, available in Sunday's newspaper or online for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers from 6pm on Saturday. Click here to sign up.

Read these next:

'I'm probably mad' - Henrietta Knight plans to resume training career after 11-year absence 

'I do miss the training myself' - Brendan Powell relishing new role as returning Henrietta Knight's assistant 

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